Social Changes

Hungary's population rose from 13 million to 20 million between 1850
and 1910. After 1867 Hungary's feudal society gave way to a more complex
society that included the magnates, lesser nobles, middle class, working
class, and peasantry. However, the magnates continued to wield great
influence through several conservative parties because of their massive
wealth and dominant position in the upper chamber of the diet. They
fought modernization and sought both closer ties with Vienna and a
restoration of Hungary's traditional social structure and institutions,
arguing that agriculture should remain the mission of the nobility. They
won protection from the market by reestablishment of a system of entail
and also pushed for restriction of middle-class profiteering and
restoration of corporal punishment. The Roman Catholic Church was a
major ally of the magnates.

Some lesser-noble landowners survived the agrarian depression of the
late nineteenth century and continued farming. Many others turned to the
bureaucracy or to the professions.

In the mid-1800s, Hungary's middle class consisted of a small number
of German and Jewish merchants and workshop owners who employed a few
craftsmen. By the turn of the century, however, the middle class had
grown in size and complexity and had become predominantly Jewish. In
fact, Jews created the modern economy that supported Tisza's
bureaucratic machine. In return, Tisza not only denounced anti-Semitism
but also used his political machine to check the growth of an
anti-Semitic party. In 1896 his successors passed legislation securing
the Jews' final emancipation. By 1910 about 900,000 Jews made up
approximately 5 percent of the population and about 23 percent of
Budapest's citizenry. Jews accounted for 54 percent of commercial
business owners, 85 percent of financial institution directors and
owners, and 62 percent of all employees in commerce.

The rise of a working class came naturally with industrial
development. By 1900 Hungary's mines and industries employed nearly 1.2
million people, representing 13 percent of the population. The
government favored low wages to keep Hungarian products competitive on
foreign markets and to prevent impoverished peasants from flocking to
the city to find work. The government recognized the right to strike in
1884, but labor came under strong political pressure. In 1890 the Social
Democratic Party was established and secretly formed alliances with the
trade unions. The party soon enlisted one-third of Budapest's workers.
By 1900 the party and union rolls listed more than 200,000 hard-core
members, making it the largest secular organization the country had ever
known. The diet passed laws to improve the lives of industrial workers,
including providing medical and accident insurance, but it refused to
extend them voting rights, arguing that broadening the franchise would
give too many non-Hungarians the vote and threaten Hungarian domination.
After the Compromise of 1867, the Hungarian government also launched an
education reform in an effort to create a skilled, literate labor force.
As a result, the literacy rate had climbed to 80 percent by 1910.
Literacy raised the expectations of workers in agriculture and industry
and made them ripe for participation in movements for political and
social change.

The plight of the peasantry worsened drastically during the
depression at the end of the nineteenth century. The rural population
grew, and the size of the peasants' farm plots shrank as land was
divided up by successive generations. By 1900 almost half of the
country's landowners were scratching out a living from plots too small
to meet basic needs, and many farm workers had no land at all. Many
peasants chose to emigrate, and their departure rate reached
approximately 50,000 annually in the 1870s and about 200,000 annually by
1907. The peasantry's share of the population dropped from 72.5 percent
in 1890 to 68.4 percent in 1900. The countryside also was characterized
by unrest, to which the government reacted by sending in troops, banning
all farm-labor organizations, and passing other repressive legislation.

In the late nineteenth century, the Liberal Party passed laws that
enhanced the government's power at the expense of the Roman Catholic
Church. The parliament won the right to veto clerical appointments, and
it reduced the church's nearly total domination of Hungary's education
institutions. Additional laws eliminated the church's authority over a
number of civil matters and, in the process, introduced civil marriage
and divorce procedures.

The Liberal Party also worked with some success to create a unified,
Magyarized state. Ignoring the Nationalities Law, they enacted laws that
required the Hungarian language to be used in local government and
increased the number of school subjects taught in that language. After
1890 the government succeeded in Magyarizing educated Slovaks, Germans,
Croats, and Romanians and co-opting them into the bureaucracy, thus
robbing the minority nationalities of an educated elite. Most minorities
never learned to speak Hungarian, but the education system made them
aware of their political rights, and their discontent with Magyarization
mounted. Bureaucratic pressures and heightened fears of territorial
claims against Hungary after the creation of new nation-states in the
Balkans forced Tisza to outlaw "national agitation" and to use
electoral legerdemain to deprive the minorities of representation.
Nevertheless, in 1901 Romanian and Slovak national parties emerged
undaunted by incidents of electoral violence and police repression.